Coach vs Coach (Patreon)

Admittedly I was a bit down when Troy knocked on my office door. We had just lost the game to City the evening before, and in about an hour I would go to the weekly team meeting with all the coaches. The meeting would be fine, I was sure, but I would have to face that smug Larry, who cuddles the track and feels athletes. We have a rivalry going back years on how to best coach, and to say we don’t see eye to eye is an understatement.

So when Troy came knocking and wanted to talk to me I was just looking for any possibility to throw him under a bus to spite Larry. Turns out he was willing to step out in traffic on his own. He felt like he wasn’t getting where he wanted, which was ironic for a junior triathlon champion. He was looking to build more mass, probably to swoon more of the girls. Or boys, it’s a confusing age in a confusing time. In his case a year and a bit before graduation. Regardless, coach Larry had pretty much blocked that, saying it would hurt his athletic career.

I perhaps wasn’t impartial, but for sure couldn’t give a shit about Troy’s athletic career, and if Larry didn’t want this, all the more reason for me to be helpful. This was just before Easter, so I needed to make sure my meddling went undetected the rest of the semester. I had just the right ace up my sleeve for this. Of all the different ingredients in the medical pantry, we never use growth suppression. Why would we? But now I saw a golden chance. I quickly put together a regimen for Troy to follow, asked him sternly if this was really what he wanted. I have some ethic concerns for the students after all. When he wholeheartedly agreed to his deal with the devil I handed him a quarter’s worth of medical supplies and sent him off.

None of the snide comments from Larry had any effect on me. I was just glowing the entire meeting. I had some doubts the day after, and went looking for Troy in the gym. I think I watched him in secret for a good 15 minutes, while he worked harder with the weights than any of my students. And perfect form as well, like all the gymnastic fuckers. My will to tell him to focus on the decathlon championship just crumbled, and I went back to my office with a smile on my face.

I did check back a few times up to summer recess. As I had planned there wasn’t much of any progress for him. I had told him that the start might be a bit slow, not telling him why that might be, and if anything he was doing his best to prove me wrong. Great. The more he works out now, the bigger the effect later when he runs out of TAH-inhibitor.

I must be honest that I did not recognize the huge, young man that came lumbering towards me at the parking lot first day after summer. At first I was wondering why I hadn’t seen this line backer material before. When he got close enough to start a conversion I recognized him and got a bit anxious. This pretend fight with Larry had its first real victim, I realized. But instead of shouting at me, or breaking my jaw with an uppercut, he gave me a bruising hug. “It worked, coach.”